


Experiences

by fourshoesfrank



Series: autistic criminal minds [3]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Autism Spectrum, Autistic David Rossi, Childhood, Gen, Masking, Period-Typical Ableism, episode s06 e16 Coda, episode-related, im going ape shit buck wild writing this, this is a vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 16:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21377311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourshoesfrank/pseuds/fourshoesfrank
Summary: Everyone thinks that Rossi knows so much about autistic children because he had one, not because he was one.
Relationships: David Rossi & The BAU Team
Series: autistic criminal minds [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1529216
Comments: 10
Kudos: 96





	Experiences

“Do you mind my asking what the fight was about?” Dave only asked Elizabeth this this question to profile her, maybe see if she lied to him to maintain her image. If he had suspected what her answer was going to be, he probably wouldn’t have asked. The information she gave him was the truth, but it didn’t develop help the profile. He would’ve been better off not knowing. 

“I was the one who suspected Sammy had autism,” Elizabeth answered. She added, “Charlie couldn’t see it. He was so upset, he kicked me out.” 

Dave felt a new level of respect within himself for this woman. Bringing something like that up to a neurotypical relative must have been hard.

“How did you know?”

“He was... different. So I did some research. Charlie was blind to it. He refused to accept what I found.”

“He was afraid. Any father would be, learning his child isn’t going to have it as easy as he did.” _And don’t I know it. _

“You sound like you talk from experience,” she said. She was probably thinking about the similarities between Dave and her brother. He almost snorted. Elizabeth was comparing him to the wrong member of her family. 

_I don’t have quite the experience you’re thinking of,_ Dave thought to himself. It was a common misconception, that he knew about autistic kids because his child was autistic. James, as far as Dave knew, had been neurotypical, and although Joy did have most of the signs, she’d never been diagnosed and Dave hadn’t spent enough time with her to know for sure. He regretted that, but it was the truth. 

He’d never raised an autistic kid, but his own parents had. 

-

It wasn’t Dave’s aunt who suggested the possibility of him being autistic to his parents, it was his Uncle Sal. He brought it up during Thanksgiving when Dave was seven years old. 

Dave been a late talker, but that was no real cause for concern since he’d started saying words and sentences around four and a half years before. If he’d still been quiet at age seven, his family definitely would’ve known that something was up. 

They did know that something was up with Dave, but none of his relatives wanted to take a guess at what exactly it was. Nobody wanted to try to explain why he was so attached to his daily routine, why he couldn’t manage to carry on a conversation about anything except cars, or why he couldn’t stand wearing starchy button-up shirts and scratchy wool coats. Nobody wanted to take a crack at telling Dave’s parents why their little boy hated the texture of his nonna’s special Italian wedding soup or why he screamed when the neighbors’ little lapdog wouldn’t stop barking at him on Halloween night while he was out trick-or-treating. 

Nobody wanted to do it, and nobody wanted to be present when some unlucky relative finally did it. When Uncle Sal took Dave’s father aside and told him that his child might have had a neurological condition, Dave’s father flipped out. He became enraged, pushing Sal away from him and shouting at him to “Never, _ever_ talk like that again! Dave‘s a normal fuckin’ kid and he don’t need any doctor makin’ his life harder, alright?”

Dave watched this go down from his seat at the kids’ table, and he felt his cousins’ inquisitive stares for the rest of the night. Only one of them brought it up with him, though. The rest were like the grownups, too timid and too comfortable being quiet to do anything. 

“Why were your dad and Uncle Sal yelling?”

Dave shrugged. “I dunno. Prob’ly money,” he lied. He knew exactly what it was about, but that didn’t mean he had to tell his cousin. 

That was it. Nothing ever came of it. Dave spent his entire childhood knowing that he was different, but not knowing why. He had no satisfactory explanation for the rift he felt between himself and his peers. 

Eventually, he adapted. He was forced to. He learned how to read a room in an instant, and change the face he presented to the room accordingly. As a kid, Thanksgiving-dinner Dave was different from distant-relative’s-funeral Dave; as a teen, team-dinner Dave was different from movie-date Dave; as an adult, office-party Dave was different from interrogation-room Dave. He remodeled his personality depending on the people around him, playing nice with the powerful ones and telling the others not to mess with him, sometimes doing the exact opposite if his profiling training demanded it of him. 

It took a long time for Dave to figure out that he doesn’t have to mangle his self-expression around the BAU team. First it was Max Ryan, Jason Gideon, Aaron Hotchner, and the rest of the Behavior Sciences Unit who accepted Dave without his usual blustering and embellishments. Now, what feels like an eternity later, his team in the Behavioral Analysis Unit has continued to accept him. They’re wonderful, magnificent human beings, even if Dave doesn’t always let them know that he thinks of them like that. He doesn’t have to tell them. They’re profilers; they know. If they haven’t picked up on the fact that Dave only lets his guard down when he’s with them, they’d have to be both terrible at their jobs and also terrible at observing and noting basic facts. When Dave is with his team, he knows that he can act like himself, and that will be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> eyyyy i would love some commenting and/or kudosing so much))


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